The Axe (29 page)

Olav came up to her and laid a hand caressingly on her neck. “Oh no,” he said absently; “the fiord is much broader at Hestviken, you must know. It is the salt sea there. And the manor stands higher, as far as I remember.”

He went back, picked up the shirt, and folded it. “This must have been a great task, Ingunn—with all the stitches you have put into it.”

“Oh—I have had four years to work at it,” she said in a hard voice.

“Come, we will go out,” said Olav hotly. “We will go out and talk!”

They walked together over the fields till they came to a meadow that sloped to the water. Junipers and other bushes grew on the dry, rocky ground, and here and there were patches of short, sun-scorched grass.

“Come, sit down here!”—He lay on his stomach facing her and gazed fixedly as though far away in his own thoughts.

In a way she thought they were brought nearer to each other merely by his losing himself in thought and remaining silent as soon as he had got her alone; she was so used to this from their childhood. She sat looking affectionately at the little scattered freckles over the root of his nose—they too were intimate, it seemed to her.

Great clouds drifted across the sky, throwing shadows that turned the forests dark blue—the patches of green meadow and white cornfield showed up so strongly between. And the fiord was grey with smooth dark currents farther out, which reflected scraps of the autumnal land. Now and again the sun came out, and its sharp, golden light baked them—but the next moment a cloud came by and the warmth was gone—and the ground was bleak.

At long last the girl asked: “What are you thinking of so, Olav?”

He sighed, as though awaking; then he took her hand and laid his face against the palm. “If you could be less unreasonable—” he answered, taking up again their talk in the loft. He paused a moment. “I ran off from Hövdinggaard without saying a word of thanks—”

Ingunn gave a little terrified cry.

“Ay,” Olav went on. “ ’Tis ill done—’twas not seemly, for uncle had been a good man to me in many ways—”

“Did you quarrel?”

“Not that either. It came about that he did a thing I liked not. He had one of his house-carls punished—I cannot say it was more than the man deserved. But uncle was often cruel, when he was beside himself with rage—and you know I have never liked to see man or beast tortured needlessly—”

“And so you quarrelled?”

“Not that either. This fellow had turned traitor—They had been sitting drinking in the hall, uncle and some kinsmen and friends—ay, they were
my
kinsmen too—they had come to us to keep Easter—it was the evening of Easter Day. They spoke of the King, and there was none there who wished him well—and so they let out something of their plans against King Eirik. They weave many strange plots there now, you see—and we were all drunken and careless of our mouths. This Aake had been waiting at table, and he ran off to the King’s captain at Holbekgaard and sold him the tidings he had heard; and this came to uncle’s ears. So uncle had the man led out into the pleasance and bound to the biggest oak, and then he stretched up the traitor’s right hand, the hand that had sworn fealty to Barnim, and nailed it to the trunk with a knife.

“Ay, ’tis not that ’twas undeserved, I say naught of that. But as the night wore on. I thought that Aake might have stood there long enough. So I went out and freed him and lent him a horse—I bade him send it back to a house in Kallundborg, where I was known, when he had found a chance to escape from Sealand.—But I thought that uncle would be mighty wroth with me for playing him this trick, and that ’twould boot me little to speak with him. I had heard that the Earl lay to the northward off the point—so I gathered together what I could of my goods and rode
northward the same night. And so it came about that I was in England with the Earl this year.

“Ay, ’twas no fitting thanks I gave uncle—and I pray to God every day that he may not have more trouble through my setting Aake free. You know, I made him swear, but an oath and a belch are all one to such a fellow—Had uncle had him hanged, I should have said ’twas well done. But as he stood there by the oak, with his hand nailed fast—’Twas just after Easter, you know; we had been to church every day, and I had crept to the cross and kissed it on Good Friday.—So it came over me that the man standing there was like one crucified—”

Ingunn nodded quietly. “ ’Twas surely a good deed.”

“God knows. Would I could believe it. And you know that if I go back to Denmark in the Earl’s company, I can send uncle a message—maybe find occasion to visit him and beg his forgiveness. For I showed him gross ingratitude.”

He gazed longingly over the dark-blue forests. “You say you are not in good case here, Ingunn. It has not been like keeping Yule every day with me either. I make no complaint of my rich kinsmen—but they are rich and proud men, and I came to them poor and a stranger, an outlawed man—a boy they counted me and no true-born scion of their race, since ’twas not they who had given mother in marriage. I will not say they might have received me better than they did—things being as they were.

“You must not be deaf to reason,” he bade her again. He pushed himself forward and let his head fall heavily in her lap. “Gladly would I stay here now, or take you with me—were there any means to do it. Would you rather I had not come, since I could not come to stay?”

Ingunn shook her head, drew her hands through his hair, and ruffled it caressingly.

“But ’tis strange,” she said in a low voice, “that your uncle would not do more for you—when he has no children living, other than that nun?”

“Had I been willing to stay in Denmark. But I always said I would not. And he must have seen that I yearned to be home again.”

After a while Ingunn asked: “These friends of yours—in that town you spoke of—what kind of folk are they?”

“Oh, nothing,” replied Olav a little crossly. “A tavern. I was
often in that town for uncle—selling bullocks and such errands—”

Ingunn stroked his hair again and again.

“A kiss you may give me for all that!” He rose on his knees, clasped her tightly in his arms, and kissed her on the mouth.

“You may have as many as you will,” she whispered close to him. The tears came trickling from her eyelids as she felt his strong, hot kisses all over her face and down her neck. “As many as you will—You might have had kisses every day!”

“Then I fear I should have been far too greedy!” He laughed low in his throat. “My Ingunn!” He bent her head back till her neck nearly touched the ground. “But now ’twill not be long—” he muttered.

“We must go up,” he said, letting her go. “ ’Tis long past dinner-time. I wonder how Lady Magnhild will like it that we left the house in this fashion!”

“I care not,” muttered Ingunn defiantly.

“Nay, nor I either!” Olav laughed as he took her hand and raised her. He dusted her and himself with his cap. “But now we must go home, for all that.”

He walked on with her hand in his, until they came to the path where they could be seen from the house.

I
NGUNN
went about her daily life, after Olav had gone, unable to conquer a trace of disappointment. It was as though his visit had been to
her
least of all.

She knew it was wrong to take it thus. Olav had behaved prudently in letting it seem that he had given up his old claim on her: that she was his to possess and enjoy. In any case they could never have carried that through here at Berg. And he had gained the assent of both Ivar and Magnhild to her staying here as his lawful betrothed.

Lady Magnhild gave her gifts for her bridal chest—it had been sadly empty till now. A cloak of green velvet, lined with beaver-skin, as good as new; a tablecloth and a towel with a blue pattern;
two shifts of linen and one of silk; the full furnishing of a cradle; three bench covers in picture weaving; a brass pot, a drinking-horn with silver mounts, and a great silver tankard—all this she received in the course of the next two months. And she got Aasa Magnusdatter to give her granddaughter the good bedding she had in store, with curtains and rugs, bolster, skin coverlets, and sheets of stuff. “Is Ingunn to be married?” the grandmother asked in surprise, each time her daughter begged some of her possessions. She forgot it from day to day.

Ivar promised to give her a horse and saddle, and money to buy six good cows—it would be too heavy a task to drive cattle from the Upplands to the Vik. And he bade her come south to Galtestad, so that she might choose from among the wearing-apparel left by his dead wife: “I would rather you had it than Tora—she is grown so high and mighty since she got this Haakon Thunder-guts and became the royal mother of his sons.”

He went so far as to find out what had become of Olav’s clothes-chest, which was sold at Hamar when the boy was proclaimed outlaw. The chest was of white limewood, an unusually handsome piece of work, with the finest carving on the fore side. Ivar bought it back and sent it to Ingunn at Berg.

The axe Kinfetch had been with the Dominicans at Hamar the whole time. Brother Vegard hid it away when the Sheriff took possession of Olav’s personal property. The monk said it was no great sin; for this axe, which had descended in the same family for more than a hundred years, ought not to come into the hands of strangers so long as Olav was alive. When Olav now came back to Hamar, Brother Vegard was in Rendalen preaching to the peasants there on the Paternoster and the Angel’s Greeting—he had made up four excellent sermons on these subjects, and with these he travelled about the diocese in the summer. But Olav had sought out the Prior and had done public penance in church for the manslaughter in the convent. After that the Prior had given him back the axe. But when he set out again for the south, he left it behind in charge of the monks.

Kolbein was beyond measure furious when Ivar applied to him to treat of an atonement on Olav’s behalf. Never would he accept fines for Einar’s slaying—Olav Audunsson should be an unatoned felon, and Ingunn could stay where she was, without honour and without inheritance, unless she would accept such a match as her
kinsmen could provide for a debauched woman—a serving-man or a small farmer.

Ivar merely laughed at his half-brother. Kolbein must be mad if he knew so little of the times he lived in: if the King granted Olav leave to dwell in the land, then Kolbein might, if he pleased, refuse to accept the fines—let the silver lie by the church door for crows and vagabonds to pick up; Olav would sit just as safely at Hestviken for all that. And as to his betrothal with Ingunn, ’twas nothing but folly to seek to deny that the bargain had been made of old. That Olav had forestalled them, at the time they thought of giving the bride to Haakon Gautsson, Ivar now thought a good thing: he was well pleased that this nephew by marriage had shown while still so young that he was a man who would not be cheated of his lawful rights.

Haakon Gautsson was now engaged in litigation with his wife’s kinsmen about an inheritance that he claimed on Tora’s behalf; but Ivar had little thought of praising
this
nephew on this account; it was for this he had given Haakon his pretty nickname. Thus Haakon and Tora kept away this autumn, while Ivar and Magnhild were working to arrange Ingunn’s marriage.

Haftor Kolbeinsson had a meeting with Ivar at Berg to treat of the matter. Haftor was a hard, cold man, but upright in a way, and much shrewder than his father. He saw full well that if Olav Audunsson had made powerful friends who would advance his cause, it was useless for his father to raise difficulties about the atonement. The only way in which they could gain was by demanding that the fines be fixed as high as possible.

All this kept up Ingunn’s spirits. She accepted every gift as a pledge that now she would soon have Olav back, and then he would take her home with him. She yearned so for him—and when he was here last, he had spoken so little to her. It was natural, she saw, that he must now think above all of winning over her kinsmen and securing their joint estate. And when she was once his, she believed full surely that he would love her as in old days. Although he was no longer so blind and hasty as he had been then. The change in him was that he was now grown up—it was in him that she first became fully aware how many years had gone by since they were children together at Frettastein.

•   •   •

It was Haftor Kolbeinsson who brought news to Berg, when he came thither after Whitsuntide next spring to receive the second part of the blood-money for Einar.

Olav had made payment of one half at mid-Lent in Hamar—a German merchant from Oslo had brought the silver, and Ivar had appeared with him; Haftor received the money for his father. A part of the sum should now have been paid after Whitsuntide, and the remainder Olav himself was to hand over to the dead man’s representatives at the summer Thing, which was held every year at Hamar after the conclusion of the Eidsiva Thing. After that he was to have received Ingunn at the hands of her kinsmen.

But this time no man had come from Olav; on the other hand, Haftor had strange tidings to tell of the Earl, Olav’s lord. Queen Ingebjörg Eiriksdatter had died at Björgvin early in the spring, and Earl Alf must then have feared that the days of his mastery in Norway were over. The young Duke Haakon had hated his mother’s counsellors heartily ever since he was a little boy. Now he sent word to the Earl bidding him send to Oslo the mercenaries he had hired in England the summer before—it had been done in the name of the Norwegian King, but Earl Alf had kept them with him at Borg, to the great annoyance and mischief of the folk of the country round. The Earl obeyed the command in this manner, that he came sailing in to Oslo with a whole fleet and went up into the town with more than two hundred men; he himself lodged with his following in the King’s palace with Sir Hallkel Krökedans, the Duke’s captain. One evening some of these Fi’port wights,
as the English hirelings were called, broke into a homestead near the town, plundered it, and maimed the master of the house. Sir Hallkel demanded the surrender of the malefactors, and when the Englishmen refused to give up the culprits, he had a number of them made prisoners, took out five men at random, and hanged them. Thereupon the Englishmen made an attack on the King’s palace and it came to an open fight between the Earl’s men and the townsmen, the town was plundered, and the whole of that part which lies from St. Clement’s Church and the river down to the King’s Palace and the quays was burned. The end of it was that the Earl sailed out of Folden
with his whole host,
and he carried Sir Hallkel with him as a prisoner—he sought to throw the whole blame of the disaster upon him. But these tidings were brought to the Duke while he lay under the coast in the south, on his way home from his mother’s funeral, and now he collected a force in haste and got his brother, the King, with him. They sailed across to Borgesyssel; Sarpsborg and Isegran were taken by storm, and about three hundred of the Earl’s men were said to have fallen or were slain afterwards by the peasants of the district; Alf’s seneschal at Isegran and several men of his bodyguard were executed by the Duke—folk said in revenge for Hallkel Krökedans, who had been put to death in the castle there by order of the Earl. Alf himself and the remnant of his host were said to have saved themselves by flight to Sweden, and King Eirik had made him an outlaw in Norway with all the men who were in his following.